OPINION: How dare Liz Windsor not attend the Royal Variety Performance

Yesterday, the Queen refused to attend the Royal Variety Performance in Salford. She wasn't sick and she didn't have other state appointments to fulfill that were more important. She just said that she wasn't going to attend.

It turns out the reason was that her husband, Philip, had said that they had travelled to Liverpool last week and weren't going to travel to Salford this week.

Hang on a minute! The nation pays well in excess of £200 million a year for this woman and her family to do a few tasks. How dare she refuse to attend. If anyone else in the country refused to carry out their job they would be disciplined and, quite likely, sacked?

Now! I know she is getting on, she's a few months older than my mother, and her husband is older still, but if you're not up to the job you should, surely, retire?

Liz Windsor carries out somewhere between 300-400 official engagements each year - often they are lunches or dinners (so very taxing) and many work days will have 3 or 4 engagements on th same day because they aren't arduous or long. So, in reality, she only works for about a third of the year.

Even if her husband wasn't prepared to travel, even though he benefits from the millions spent on the monarchy each year and has lived a life of luxury at the taxpayers' expense for decades, old Liz should have turned up.

Sure, she sent along her daughter. So what? Clearly Anne is underemployed in the family firm if she can drop everything and pop to Salford a short notice. Or did Liz and Phil never intend to attend?

The Queen has, generally, attended every other year of the Royal Variety Performance, and attended her first while still Princess Elizabeth in the late 1940s. The Royal Command Performance, as it was originally called, started nearly a century ago, in 1912. The 2011 RVP was the first to be held at The Lowry, Salford - what message does this send to the North of England?

Surely an evening at the theatre, some bland comments to toadying celebs and some handshaking isn't a lot to ask in return for her salary?

If she's too old to do the job, or too frail, then she should retire (abdicate); if she's too ill then a regent should be appointed in her place; if the Windsors have decided they can't be bothered to carry out their duties then it is more proof that it is the time for a republic.